


There's No Beer In Team, But There Should Be

by FunkyinFishnet



Category: All Elite Wrestling, Professional Wrestling
Genre: Drinking, Drinking & Talking, Food, Friendship, Gen, Home, Sign Language, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24460678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyinFishnet/pseuds/FunkyinFishnet
Summary: Adam Page is a tag team champion but not really part of a team. Anyway, he’s got beer and fans buying him beer and some really good gravy in sandwiches thanks to the Jurassic Express. He should have looked for a better team months back.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	There's No Beer In Team, But There Should Be

**Author's Note:**

> Set before Stadium Stampede.

Someone’s singing. Adam swigs more from his bottle and wonders, where’s the singing coming from? He can’t work out the accent. The singing’s not bad and the beer tastes good, that’s what matters, and hey, gold feels good around his waist. He’s a champion, he's an AEW champion before Matt or Nick. Haha.

There’s a dinosaur. He squints, yeah, it’s a dinosaur up ahead, like, walking around and stuff. It’s right there, green face, blue jeans, a dinosaur in blue jeans. A familiar dinosaur. Adam’ll get his name any second, it’s right there, but the dinosaur's carrying...carrying a lunchbox? Adam squints harder but the dinosaur walks off, growling. Adam toasts him anyway.

His phone beeps and lets him know via Twitter that a bunch of fans want to buy him drinks just down the street. Awesome. Adam gets unsteadily to his feet. He can still hear the singing and the dinosaur growling. He toasts it again.

///

There’s a pain in his head and a crunching noise so loud, Adam’s sure his head is gonna explode. He cracks his eyes open, winces, and realises two things, he’s curled up in a great outdoor drinking and sleeping spot – Where? Who cares – and someone’s standing really close, crunching. He can see a giant hand holding something, he tries to swat it away.

“Hey, hey, sauce, man!”

That voice is weird and familiar. Adam peers out past his hangover - it’ll be gone by the time he’s drunk breakfast - and sees bushy brown hair that’s familiar too, the memory sliding slow as molasses. Adam waits for it to catch up. In the meantime, he shoves at the hand and hears a yelp as something squishes under his fingers. What the fuck, that’s not what usually happens. There’s a growl then that makes Adam sit up.

Because that’s familiar too and he’s seeing the dinosaur again. The dinosaur is glaring down, holding the giant’s hand up. The giant looks tiny next to the dinosaur and is holding a wrap or something, it’s dripping red sauce on the sidewalk. Adam needs to drink more so his memory will speed up and find names. Oh, there’s his bottle and it’s still got beer in.

“...and you don’t poke people when you don’t know where they’ve been!”

“Instagram says bars and dives. It’s Hangman.”

“Which is why you don’t touch him.”

Adam drinks his beer slowly. He doesn’t wanna ruin this shirt, he likes this shirt. He toasts the dinosaur like he did last night and the tiny giant points.

“He started it, he broke my enchilada!”

The dinosaur glares at Adam, Adam peers at the sticky sauce on his fingers. It tastes good, spicy. He can see more clearly now. He reaches for the tiny giant’s wrap but the tiny giant clutches it close and defiantly bites off a huge mouthful.

“Steal your own breakfast, Page,” the dinosaur growls. “And take a shower and sleep indoors tonight, you smell like garbage.”

The tiny giant nods and Adam’s distracted then, by trying to remember the guy’s name. His memory catches up suddenly, beer does that, and a name bursts past his teeth, “Marko!”

Marko the tiny giant waves, grinning, cheeks stuffed with breakfast enchilada. Has he gotten taller? Wait, he’s getting smaller now. Oh, because the dinosaur’s leading him away. Adam still can’t get hold of the dinosaur’s name. He needs more beer. A dinosaur should have a name.

He gets up when his bottle’s empty and he still can’t catch a name, there’s a bar nearby though. Oh, it’s not open. He can smell the enchilada sauce, his stomach rumbles loud enough to stop traffic.

There’s food back at the hotel. He orders breakfast up to his room while he showers, drinking under the water, it’s refreshing. The water’s great when it’s this hot and he’s remembered to take his clothes off before he got in this time.

When the water turns cold, he slogs out, dropping the empty bottle with his clothes. His head doesn’t hurt now, enough beer always closes the circle. He wonders, if the dinosaur wears jeans, does he wear shoes too? Maybe he cuts the toes off them to fit.

His food arrives and he eats bacon and apples and wishes there was a spicy sauce. Where did Marko get it from? Where’s open before 9am in this city? It’s not like the woods or wherever they live, where they can catch and eat whatever they want. It gets Adam thinking about his aunt’s sweet tomato barbeque sauce and fuck, he misses blue crabs. He grabs his phone to punch a message to her. By the time he’s finished breakfast, he’s thinking about how much air travel there is between him and a Virginia market.

///

Someone’s got a great sandwich. Adam can smell it, he drinks his beer and glances around backstage but can’t spot the eater. He gestures for Kenny to follow him, can’t Kenny smell that? The champs deserve the best. Kenny stays put though. He’s gotta work on his priorities.

Adam finds Jungle Boy sat on a crate, in a crowd of sound stuff, chewing on something that is dripping with, gravy? That’s definitely part of the smell. It looks like good gravy too; thick and covering all the sandwich meat. Adam hasn’t seen those kinds of sandwiches in catering before, Matt and Nick have real bad taste in dinner.

Jungle Boy looks at Adam for a long moment, chewing, then suddenly, he throws something. Adam catches it with an easy left hand and Jungle Boy’s eyebrows lifts. Adam’s gaze quickly gets fixed to the sandwich he’s now holding. He wouldn’t be giving it away himself.

Jungle Boy signs something, it’s smooth and quick but Adam tries to copy it, because the part at the end looked like the start of a lasso. Jungle Boy looks surprised but slowly does the sign so that Adam can copy ‘til he gets it right. Ha, Adam grins with a dauntless nod, he could get this, he’s a quick draw. Nick and Matt don’t have a secret language. He turns back to the sandwich.

“You’re giving me this for **free**?”

Jungle Boy looks like Adam said something funny. They both eat in silence - the gravy is amazing, Adam makes sure not to get any on his championship. He doesn’t meet enough people who get how important gravy is. And Jungle Boy doesn’t have to talk, the food’s more important. Jungle Boy clearly gets that. Adam offers his beer glass but Jungle Boy shakes his head. His hair is so shiny, how does he get it like that in the woods? Kenny’s got curls too but his never look so shiny and he’s not using river water. Jungle Boy’s holding a paper cup of something, soda it smells like.

That’s when the dinosaur rounds the corner and looms over them both. His face looks greener, is that his name, something about green? Jungle Boy signs some more, really quick and neat, and the dinosaur signs back, cutting a sharp glance at Adam. Adam offers him the sandwich, his mouth stuffed full.

“You need some?”

“No. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Marko the giant’s there now too, poking out from behind the dinosaur’s thighs, his hand stretching, “I’ll take it.”

Adam holds out both his sandwich and his beer but the dinosaur grabs Marko really quick, “No.”

“Jungle Boy has one!”

“You had your dinner already. And you’re not having beer before a show.”

Maybe the beer’ll go to Marko’s head. It’s never happened to Adam.

He nods towards Marko, “What’s he like when he drinks?”

Jungle Boy signs something and the dinosaur agrees, “Loud.”

Jungle Boy takes a sip from his paper cup before offering it to Marko. The dinosaur doesn’t stop him and Marko takes a long drink before the dinosaur growls and Marko hands the cup back, with a satisfied sigh. His eyes are bright and wide, like his toothy smile, sharing a joke with Adam. Adam toasts Marko with his beer and Marko inches closer but the dinosaur keeps ahead of him. How does he know Jungle Boy doesn’t have beer? Is that a dinosaur smell thing?

Adam sniffs the air but all he gets is beer and gravy. Mix in straw and horseshit, sun on his neck, and that’s home. Adam smiles and toasts the group again, taking a drink that’s got an edge of gravy now. 

“You need country ham too,” he says, head full of home. “You ever had real Virginian country ham?”

“Think I had it at White Castle once,” Marko chirps, stealing a piece of meat from Jungle Boy’s sandwich.

That’s so wrong. Adam gestures, beer spilling, the dinosaur keeping Marko from launching himself to catch the drops.

“No! No, you’ve got to have it smoked slow with a Virginia BBQ sauce, my family’s got the best one in sweet tomato. I’m getting it made next weekend. I’ll bring you some.”

They probably haven’t tried Virginia crabs either. Adam waves his sandwich, gravy still gleaming.

“You need the Virginia fish experience, blue crabs and mountain trout.”

The dinosaur’s glaring at him, “We’ve had blue crabs and mountain trout.”

Adam eyes him in disbelief, “ **Virginia** blue crabs?”

Jungle Boy signs something and then acts like he's baiting a hook and dropping it into running water. Marko makes a splash sound.

“You’ve fished in Virginia?”

“We’ve fished and hunted all over,” the dinosaur replies. “We’re not the only ones living off our land, we’ve got to keep it sustainable.”

“And blue crabs are awesome,” adds Marko with a grin, like he knows the taste and loves digging out leg meat. It’s a shame he’s probably not allowed to use a hammer. 

“Where’s your fishing spots?” Adam wants to know, because he **knows** he’d have heard if a dinosaur’s been fishing in Virginia.

He hasn’t been fishing in months and the tides change things. The dinosaur’s looking at him like he wants to see Adam’s insides before answering and Jungle Boy adds a flourish to the end of his signing like a reel on a line. Adam copies him, which gets a harder look from the dinosaur, then an eyeridge raise.

“Tell him for country ham!” declares Marko. 

He’s eyeing Adam’s beer again, Adam’s ready to let him have a quick swig. He wants to see what Marko does after, and how high the dinosaur’ll swing him. Mostly though, he wants to be tugging crabs out the water and getting that meat carved out for crabcakes and sandwiches on homebaked bread.

Adam can smell straw again, and squid bate and the break of the earth under hoofbeats. He lets Marko take the beer out his hands. He’s distracted, realising too late he’s probably not gonna see that beer again. When people take his beers - Matt, Nick - he never gets them bac, he gets plenty of drinking opinions instead.

He’s glowering, thinking about their fucking nerve, when Marko shoves the beer back into his grasp. There’s plenty left too. Adam looks at him in surprise but keeps what’s left of his sandwich out of Marko’s reach when the tiny giant makes a sly grab for it.

“Cornbread,” the dinosaur says abruptly. “And brunswick stew.”

Adam grins, impressed and real pleased, because the dinosaur **does** know Virginia. He toasts them all, because hell yes to a full Virginian feast weekend. They’ve got the right taste. His aunt’s sauce is not to be beat. If Kenny got the specialiness of it, he’d have jumped at the invite Adam gave him only last week for a team meal. Kenny and his not-shiny hair. Jungle Boy’s turning his head as he finishes his sandwich and his hair gleams under the strip lighting.

There’s gotta be a bunch of good drinking spots that don't come with opinions out in the Jurassic woods. The company is definitely better. Adam's title belt digs at the hip. He drains his beer and gives the cup to Marko.


End file.
